The first indications as to how the Russian regime might react to the country's unexpected protest movement came this Thursday, when Putin took questions during a live TV broadcast. While there was plenty of the old belligerence on show, a new approach to the country’s intellectual elite suggests that Putin has yet to make up its mind.

Encouraged by the Spanish movement for ‘Real Democracy Now!’, the Occupy network and above all the Arab Awakening, Anthony Barnett asks what revolution might actually mean in the developed democracies of the West. This is his foreword to the new edition of Raymond Williams' "The Long Revolution"

In the midst of the Arab Spring there is a group of dedicated young hip hop artists who are using their medium to disseminate revolutionary ideas. This piece documents how hip hop has impacted on the way young people interact with the revolution in Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Libya and elsewhere.

The instrumentalisation of research and successive governments' preoccupation with 'impact' have gradually eroded the independence of British academia. Business and politics alike are narrowing funding and skewing outcomes.

Two apparently very different books, The Tommy Sheridan Story and Pearmain's The Politics of New Labour, both recount the search for left alternatives in Britain.

In the context of worsening relations between Iran, Syria and the west, Saeed Rahnema gave a bleak assessment of the likelihood of impending conflict. Though serious, Paul Ingram argues there are reasons to remain optimistic.

A failed bank robbery on November 4 this year, exposed a cell in eastern Germany calling itself the “National Socialist Underground”, apparently responsible for the murder of at least ten people, most of them immigrants, among other acts of violence over the last decade. Together with the murder of dozens last summer by a Norwegian right-wing extremist this case has focused a spotlight on the presence of a new right-wing terrorism. Until the media and the population at large start recognizing immigrants and others marked by ethnic or religious difference as belonging to Germany, a deep-seated, everyday racism will provide fertile soil from which such acts of extremism will continue to grow.

One of least believable returns in Russia’s disputed elections was a figure that put United Russia’s vote in Tatarstan at nearly 80%. Last Saturday, some 2,000 Tatars braved the cold to demonstrate against the obvious fraud. Authorities were infuriated by their inability to find the "organisers" of this social network-engineered protest, writes Oleg Pavlov

What the Dow wrap tells us about the London Olympic Games’s approach to sustainable development

The gap between the logics of security (clear) and development (hold, build and transfer) remains stark

Costa Rica is renowned for its excellent environmental record, but with the construction of a 150km road beside the San Juan river it appears to be going against that reputation by causing enormous damage to the environment.

Even after the expenses scandal shook parliament to its core, many British MPs are still putting greed before duty.

Next Monday marks the anniversary of Belarus' disgraceful 2010 elections, which led to a brutal campaign of intimidation, imprisonment, violence and torture against opponents of the regime. Last month, Nikolaj Nielsen travelled to Minsk — still pincered between paranoia and fear — to talk to the brave men and women fighting for their country's freedom.

The author's new film on adoption in the UK had to overcome huge difficulty and sensitivity to expose the uncomfortable truths about a process which does not always work for the children whose welfare it is meant to promote

Switzerland and the autonomous Basque region of Spain decide to shift their marijuana policies in a more liberal, reformist direction. The governor of Arizona suddenly becomes a fan of federal law over states' rights and appeals to the courts to rule on the new voter-approved medical cannabis laws. Mexico, as always, maintains a high profile this week, from its nascent anti-cartel movement to the apparent incursion of trafficking violence across the US border. ~ jw

The argument in America for war against Iran is often couched in religious-apocalyptic terms. But the decisive element in the end will be strategic and political calculation.

‘Ales’ Pushkin shares his name with Russia’s most famous poet, but is a very different kind of iconic figure. A restorer of church frescos, contemporary performance artist and nationalist political dissident, Pushkin is a surprising product of life in Belarus, ‘the only European country where the Soviet Union still exists’. Max Seddon meets him…

Russia's blogosphere has until recently been largely written off as a politically blunt parallel space. The Facebook mobilisation of 50,000 protestors has challenged such assumptions, writes Julien Nocetti.

Ten years into the Look East policy, Zimbabwe is showing itself to be a not-so-satisfied customer of Chinese investment.